The valkyrie novels box.., p.28
The Valkyrie Novels Box Set, page 28
part #1 of Valkyrie Series
We’d arrived on the outskirts of Central Park in the guarding shadows of a huge elm, crunching snow beneath the soles of our boots. Funny how the Bifrost always touched ground in a secure area.
On our way to the bank, we passed Rockefeller Center and paused to admire the beauty of the gigantic tree. I wondered then if Asgard had a similar tradition. I would miss Christmas. It was my most favorite time of the year.
At the bank, the manager ushered us through mahogany lined halls. We signed various papers in a large, hushed room while the haughty manager looked down his nose at us, dusting non-existent specks off his expensive suit. At last we collected the Professor’s necklace without incident. We exited the steel vault, drawing strange stares from the stiff, stern-faced bank employees. Along with the necklace, we’d taken the pencil sketch of the necklace, which showed us what Brisingamen would have looked like if the entire piece were intact.
Trudging through the snow, we passed shop windows fitted out for Christmas, all red holly and deep green trees. The cheer of the holidays was lost on Aidan and me as we found another nondescript motel in another nondescript part of town to hunker down in, where the Christmas spirit was dusty and torn, old and broken.
We’d been elated with our find at first, entranced by the third glowing pendant; the set of three shimmered against the skin around my throat. But we came crashing back down when we examined the drawing in detail. The complete necklace was a series of smaller pendants, each holding a large amber gem in its center. In total, nine individual gems would circle the wearer’s neck in a garland of little gleaming suns. Three down, six to go.
“Now what?” Aidan looked at me, eyebrows heavy and shoulders drooping as he sat on the sagging, pumpkin-orange bedcover. His skin was pallid, slowly drained of his blood. The faint outline of the bullet hole-sized bruise in his forehead was more prominent than ever. The Mead had hidden it for the short time we were with the Professor, but it had returned with a vengeance when we crossed the Bifrost.
I dug out a pouch of Mead and poured a glass for each of us. “Now, we wait for Loki,” I said.
“Oh. Yeah. Forgot about him.”
Another restless night passed, while I pondered the wisdom of accepting Loki’s offer. I was pretty certain Aidan worried about the same thing. He grew weaker by the day, believing it was Midgard that drained his energies, while I wallowed in my own special brand of guilt.
We ate breakfast at a rundown diner around the corner from the motel. Bad coffee, worse food. Dull chrome and ripped leather. A man sat two booths down from us, watching us over an untouched cup of coffee. He smiled, showing white teeth, tanned skin and hair that seemed darker than Aidan’s even in the weak morning light.
“He’s here,” I hissed. Aidan frowned and turned to look at Mr. Mysterious.
“Loki?”
I nodded. Then raised my own coffee cup in salute to the god. Loki’s eyes swirled a bronze-gold hue, and he rose, bringing his cup with him. I shifted and he sat beside me. Aidan stared at this new version of Loki and shook his head.
“So, what’s the deal? How do we find Nidhogg?” I asked. Something about Loki made my skin crawl. Just his presence sent shivers up and down my spine.
The bell over the door jangled and the only other customer walked out, head bent low, wrapping his scarf against the blast of Arctic air. Right before the door swung shut, Hugin flew in through the open crack. I glanced at the waitress. Thank heaven she was busy clearing a table and didn’t notice. I hoped nobody else would.
Hugin landed on my shoulder. I should have considered it significant that he chose the shoulder farthest from the god, but I was merely grateful for his presence. He felt like living protection.
“Take care what you promise Loki and what promises you extract from him. He is not the most trustworthy of gods.” Hugin’s baritone soothed my nerves and calmed me.
“You’re ready to play at last?” The smug smile on Loki’s face made me want to draw my sword and dice him into small pieces. Instead, I gritted my teeth and smiled.
“This isn’t a game to us,” I answered. Loki knew Aidan’s life was at stake, but he continued to treat this as a sport. He was beginning to piss me off. “Now, how do we get to this Nidhogg?”
“The Rainbow of the Gods,” said Loki.
“The what?” Aidan asked. An expression of confusion flickered over his features.
Apparently, Aidan didn’t trust the god either and I intended to play along. The less Loki knew about our travels, or the extent of our knowledge, the better.
“Also known as the Bifrost. It’s the method the gods use to travel between the Nine Worlds,” Loki said, impatience furrowing his brow. “You’ll need to find the nearest location and use it to travel to Muspell. Muspell is the Realm of Fire.”
I didn’t need to feign ignorance here. But Aidan didn’t look in the least confused.
“The Great Nidhogg resides within the Realm of Fire. It is he whom Loki wishes you to seek. But beware, for he is a trickster.” Hugin’s honeyed voice sounded in my ear.
I rolled my eyes. Tell me something I don’t know.
Loki looked at me and smiled his cheerful, cloying grin. “Do you know how to find the Bifrost?”
“No, but I’m sure Hugin can help us. So how did Nidhogg end up with the rest of the necklace, and why can’t you go there and take it from him yourself?” I snapped, unafraid to reveal my impatience with the god.
I’d begun to wonder if this was all a setup. One huge ruse to ensure Brunhilde the Ancient was well and truly punished for her failure to fulfill her original pledge to Freya. Maybe the goddess was just a vindictive bitch and was, right now, laughing at my predicament.
The hopelessness of the whole situation was getting to me. Or maybe it was seeing Aidan get more and more ill every day, or the recent bullet to the ribs I’d received. The Mead seemed to have done nothing to help the healing, and I wondered whether it worked at all to help Aidan.
I was also curious why Loki wanted us to do his dirty work for him. I doubted he really wanted us to give the necklace back to Freya.
Loki picked up a menu and scanned it, a bored look on his face. “As you know, a gem of Brisingamen will glow when it detects the presence of the other gems,” he said. “Using that piece of the necklace, I was able to track down the rest of the pieces. But I cannot enter Muspell. Therefore, I cannot retrieve the rest of the necklace and return it to Freya.” He tossed down the menu, smiled and shook his head, sadness fairly oozing from his pores. But the aqua swirl of his eyes held a malevolent gleam.
“You’ve been stealing Brisingamen from Freya for centuries. Why should we believe that you want to return it to her now?” Aidan asked.
Loki pouted. “It’s no fun when I can’t steal the necklace because it’s lost. I want to give it back to her so I can see her face when I steal it from her again.”
His eyes glittered and although I believed his reasoning, my gut said that the whole necklace issue went deeper than just giving it back so the trickster god could steal it again. But it didn’t matter to me what happened to the necklace once Freya had it in her possession. Loki could steal it a hundred times over for all I cared. As long as I returned it in time to save Aidan’s life I’d be happy.
But I remembered Hugin’s words of warning.
“We’ll find this Nidhogg and get the necklace back to Freya. But what do you want in return?” I asked Loki, sure he had a price to extract from this bargain.
“Who, me?” Loki’s attempt at looking offended was a rip-roaring success. Except for his eyes. They turned a flat icy blue, revealing an ancient evil rather than mere mischief. “I don’t want anything. You just find the necklace and return it to her Majesty. That is reward enough for me.”
He wasn’t budging. By now, I’d tired of the additional energy required to keep up the pleasantries with the odious god, tired of the agony of my wound, weighed down with worry of how fast time was running out. I wanted very much for this conversation to be over.
The weak light of the morning had dissipated and bright sunlight now streamed into the overwarm diner. The buttery aroma of waffles and fried eggs rode the air, and the rich bitterness of cheap coffee reeked. The doorbell jingled a few times. More voices encircled our booth, more ignorant people living day-to-day lives I would give my right arm to live now. So far, no one had noticed Hugin. Aidan’s face looked paler in the brighter light, dark purple smudges encircled his eyes and the veins in his face and hands were clearly visible through his thinned skin.
I sighed and turned to Loki, unsure how to get rid of him.
He was gone.
Aidan raised an eyebrow and sighed. “So, let’s get our stuff sorted and head to the Bridge, then. The sooner we get this done the sooner we can go home.”
And that was when it hit me like a two-by-four to the skull; Asgard was home to both of us. Our lives in Midgard had reached a clear and conclusive end.
“Do we use the Central Park Bridge?” I asked Hugin, hoping for something closer to our motel.
My heart sank when the bird nodded.
We arrived in Muspell in a rush of heat scalding enough to burn the eyebrows off our faces. Quite a change from Greenland and New York at Christmastime. We both smiled, happy to have survived another journey on the Rainbow of the Gods.
“Right, we get in, get the necklace and get the hell outta here,” Aidan said, punctuating the sentence with a few dry coughs.
Hugin scrabbled on my shoulder and put his beak to my ear. “What is it, Hugin?”
“Once you enter Muspell there is no way out. The Nidhogg will have to release you from the bindings of this world or you may never leave.”
“Can’t you just be straight with us for once?” I bit back, fuming.
“What do you mean, Brynhildr?”
“You could have told us that sooner.” I gritted my teeth, steeling myself against swatting the daft bird up the side of his head. We were stuck here, whether I skewered the bird with my sword or not.
Chapter 40
“What?” Aidan almost shouted the question when I relayed Hugin’s news. “That was information we could have used before we decided to come here!”
As much as I was angry with Hugin, I understood exactly where we stood. “We would’ve come whether or not we knew about it. We have no choice but to follow every lead. If Nidhogg has the necklace, we do whatever we have to to get it. And get out of here.” I swallowed my outrage at Freya, who’d put me in this position.
My hurt and anger at Aidan had faded, replaced with a little understanding and a dash of forgiveness. Time heals wounds, true, but time also seemed to have cleared my vision of the haze of self-pity, too. I could see how Aidan had come to Craven, doing the job his father requested. I’d have done the same for my father.
Worse was his father’s betrayal, sending his thugs out to kill his own son. I couldn’t fathom how a father could possibly do such a thing to a son.
Aidan paced around, as if looking for something to kick in frustration. “This is ridiculous. We could be stuck here forever. We could very well die here. Damn that stupid bird!”
“Stop it, Aidan! It’s not Hugin’s fault. Damn it, it’s not even your fault. It’s all mine.” I stood at the edge of my abyss again. Held back only by the unraveling tendrils of truth.
“Don’t be stupid. It’s not your fault. It’s Freya’s pathetic scheming. You’d think gods would be benevolent, kind beings, but no. They’re just a bunch of manipulative, cruel users.”
Aidan’s anger seemed to aggravate the decline in his health. He skin looked so pale and thin I feared he’d rupture the surface with the slightest movement. The bruise from the bullet hole purpled his forehead, ridged in the middle of the wound so much like the day we’d found him beside the stream. Tears filled my eyes as I saw just how ill he really was. I blinked them away angrily.
“No, it’s my fault you are here with me,” I said.
“Look, Bryn, I wanted to come with you. You needed me to help find the necklace.” Aidan placed his hands on my shoulders, locking me in place.
“No,” I whispered, looking everywhere else but at his face. “You needed me more.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” He shook me slightly, his patience wearing as thin as the skin on his body.
“Freya put a curse on you. A curse to force me to take you on the quest. I would’ve refused, would’ve just given her the pendant and been done with it, but she pulled you into the bargain.” I pulled away, but distance from him was little consolation.
“What are you talking about?” His voice lowered, dark and dangerous.
“Freya put a curse on your life. She gave you one week from the day we left Asgard. Every day we spend outside Asgard takes one day from your life, brings you closer and closer to death. If we don’t get back to Asgard, by tonight, with the necklace, you’ll die. Again. Forever, this time.”
Silence hung in the air, dark and heavy, and it scared me. I saw all sorts of things inside that silence. Anger and hatred and blame all rolled into one vacuum of sound.
“When were you planning on telling me this?” His face was ashen.
“I don’t know. I meant to. I just couldn’t bring myself to tell you. Especially when you insisted you’d come with me. Freya instructed me to take you with, and she was right. Most of what we found so far was only because you had access to the right information.” As I spoke, I was shocked by the realization that Aidan’s presence and his gradual decline had hindered me, too, delaying me as I cared for him. Guess it didn’t matter now. I continued, “And then we were here. And then . . . it was too late.”
Aidan stared at my face, and I could see he was trying to either find something to say or trying to stop himself from saying something. Either way, I think I preferred the silence more.
He turned and stomped off, despite not knowing in which direction we were meant to go. Hugin caught up with him, and I breathed a sigh of relief, since Aidan could easily lose himself here in the bowels of this hellish world.
I trailed behind them in a self-pitying silence. What could have been was way too far in the past to concentrate on right now. I had to look ahead to finding a way to get out of this place alive. Especially now, after Hugin’s revelation. How do we steal something from Nidhogg and then ask him to allow us to leave?
The tunnels we walked through were so hot that hot was probably too mild a description. The heat parched my throat and dotted my forehead with beads of perspiration.
Great, the sauna of the underworld?
Thankfully, we had Hugin to guide us through the darkened passageways, lit by thin streams of red hot lava, which ran in thin gutters on either side of the rock floor.
Minutes later, I was grateful he’d headed Aidan off.
The passage widened before us, almost as large as a basketball court. But I paid very little attention to the decor of the cave. My eyes were stuck on the monstrous creature that stood between us and our route to Nidhogg.
The giant stood no less than ten feet tall, with muscles that bulged larger than our heads, and hair that stood out in every direction as if permanently electrified. One slam of a meaty fist and it would be goodnight for us. He could have been any giant, even Jack’s beanstalk climbing giant, except for his beard of living flame. And his eyes. Twin flaming orbs that twisted and crackled within his skull.
He wore flaming armor too, with huge bracers protecting his hands and manacles of fire at his ankles. I shivered despite the constant bombardment of sweat-wringing heat.
“What is that?” I whispered to Hugin.
“That is a Surt, one of the Giant Race, who guards the land of Muspell from intruders.”
“And we’re the intruders.” I sighed, resigned to one more thing we didn’t know. “Why didn’t you tell us about him, Hugin? We would have at least been prepared.”
“You did not ask me, Brynhildr. And it is unlikely that foreknowledge would have been sufficient to prepare you for this battle.” He reared his head, unperturbed by the raw fury boiling in my veins.
Wiseass, I thought.
I turned to Aidan, hoping he was up to the challenge of a battle with the brute. “Hankering for a good fight with a Fire Giant?”
“Can I check my calendar and get back to you?” He smiled, and I saw a glimpse of the old Aidan, despite the tightness around his eyes.
“Nope, now’s the time for action,” I said. My hand went to my sword and Aidan followed suit. I tilted my head at Hugin. “Okay, Blackbird, anything we should know, any tips on defeating this monster?”
“I am afraid I cannot assist you, Brynhildr. A battle with a Guardian of a Realm is a battle only you can fight. To breach the borders of a realm one must win the opportunity to enter using one’s strength, agility and intelligence.” With that, the raven took flight, finding a small ledge along the cave wall, well out of range of any danger.
Bloody great. So much for the purpose of the damned raven.
I stared at the giant, meeting his gaze head on, hoping I projected a confidence and strength that would have him turn and run with his fiery tail between his legs. If he had a tail. When he didn’t flee, I sighed in silence and brandished my sword. The shiiing of the blade leaving the scabbard was calming. And right now I needed calm.
My heart thudded, knocking painfully against my ribs, sweat beading my face. Aidan matched my pose beside me, but my confidence slipped at the sag to his sword and the tired hunch of his shoulders. We should have paused for a drink of Mead when we arrived. Too late now.
I bounced on lowered knees, waiting to see what the giant might do. I saw the swirling ball of fire almost too late. It zinged past my abdomen, singeing the bronze of my armor as it made a full circle. The giant growled again, air pushing at the curtain of his mustache, and grabbed hold of the fireball. The flames died, revealing a ball and chain. Deadly enough in its own right, but a pure menace with all those flames.
